INSIDE DEATH ROW / At San Quentin, 647 condemned killers wait to die in the most populous execution antechamber in the United States

SANQUENTIN_310_pg.jpg
a death row prisoner is just let out an exercise area. He's handcuffed
A tour of San Quentin prison's death row, to show how bad of shape it is in and drum up support for a new death row there. There is, of course, plenty of opposition to keeping death row on such a prime piece of real estate.
. San Quentin on 10/26/04 by Penni Gladstone
San Francisco Chronicle less

SANQUENTIN_310_pg.jpg
a death row prisoner is just let out an exercise area. He's handcuffed
A tour of San Quentin prison's death row, to show how bad of shape it is in and drum up support for a new death row ... more

Photo: Penni Gladstone

Photo: Penni Gladstone

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SANQUENTIN_310_pg.jpg
a death row prisoner is just let out an exercise area. He's handcuffed
A tour of San Quentin prison's death row, to show how bad of shape it is in and drum up support for a new death row there. There is, of course, plenty of opposition to keeping death row on such a prime piece of real estate.
. San Quentin on 10/26/04 by Penni Gladstone
San Francisco Chronicle less

SANQUENTIN_310_pg.jpg
a death row prisoner is just let out an exercise area. He's handcuffed
A tour of San Quentin prison's death row, to show how bad of shape it is in and drum up support for a new death row ... more

Photo: Penni Gladstone

INSIDE DEATH ROW / At San Quentin, 647 condemned killers wait to die in the most populous execution antechamber in the United States

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Death Row at San Quentin State Prison is an antiseptic form of hell, nearly devoid of the things, like intimacy and love, that give life value.

Living here is a numbing gray slog for the 647 condemned killers who sit, year after year, waiting to die on the nation's most populous death row.

Behind the prison's granite walls, quarried by inmates more than 150 years ago, is a stark environment of concrete floors and clanging cell doors. It is a monotonous, controlled, alternately boring and spooky place that echoes with the shouts of lost souls.

This world, with its lime green execution chamber looming in everyone's consciousness, is the destination for those deemed unsuitable to ever again step foot in the civilized world. Yet, there is a civilization inside San Quentin, where hopes still survive amid the hopelessness.

"Human beings will always make the best situation that they can for themselves in any kind of situation," said prison spokesman Vernell Crittendon, who has spent 29 years as an officer at San Quentin.

The scheduled execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams on Dec. 13 has focused international attention on San Quentin's Death Row and the battle over its replacement. The California Department of Corrections wants to spend $233 million on a new facility with 768 cells, a project death penalty opponents and Marin County officials would like to prevent.

Williams, 51, a co-founder of the Crips gang in Los Angeles, was sentenced to death for murdering a convenience store clerk in Whittier (Los Angeles County) and two motel owners and their daughter during robberies in 1979.

After eight years on Death Row, he renounced gangs and wrote the first of nine books warning children against the gang life. He has been nominated repeatedly by supporters for Nobel Prizes.

His case has become a rallying cry for those who believe rehabilitation should count for something, preferably a commutation of his sentence.

Williams is one of three Death Row inmates whose executions are anticipated this winter. Fresno County crime lord and white supremacist Clarence Ray Allen, who is the oldest condemned prisoner, has a tentative execution date of Jan. 17, the day after his 76th birthday. Michael Morales, a convicted murderer from Lodi, is expected to be given an execution date soon.

Execution is not the usual fate of Death Row inmates. On average, those who are executed spend 16 years in prison before they get a date with "the needle." So far, there have been 11 executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978. Twelve condemned inmates have committed suicide and some 30 have died of natural causes during that time.

"I've found that living a life of inactivity and non-productivity makes some inmates desire the sweet taste of death," Crittendon said. "I've talked with several who have said they would not appeal their death sentences."

The Death Row population is increasing by about 30 inmates a year. The quality of their lives is dictated by a prison caste system unique to San Quentin.

There are, in actuality, three Death Rows. About 68 condemned inmates are housed in the original Death Row, built in 1934. Called North-Segregation, this quiet cell block houses the privileged class, those inmates who get along with other prisoners and don't cause trouble.

Williams is a North-Seg resident. So is Richard Wade Farley, the bespectacled 57-year-old convicted killer of seven people during a 1988 rampage in Sunnyvale.

"This is my retirement plan," Farley said wryly, as he sat behind a wire mesh fence playing chess in the cell block hallway with another inmate last year.

About 415 less fortunate condemned inmates live in the East Block, a crumbling, leaky maze of a place built in 1927. It is a giant five-story cage, echoing with the incessant chatter and shrieking cacophony of prison.

David Carpenter, the infamous "Trailside Killer," is an East Block inhabitant. At 75, Carpenter, a convicted serial killer who terrorized hiking trails in Marin and Santa Cruz counties in the early 1980s, is the second-oldest prisoner on the row.

"We have people here who slit their children's throats, banged their kids' heads against the wall and killed them," Crittendon said, describing the types of people who inhabit the cells.

But even among the condemned, moral distinctions are made.

When Robert Alton Harris was being led away to his execution in 1992, Crittendon said, the inmates yelled "baby killer," and taunted him with references to his decision to eat the unfinished hamburgers left behind by his murder victims.

The prison code exists even in the Adjustment Center, where the "worst of the worst" are held under heavy guard and in isolation. These inmates get their exercise in 8-by-10-foot cages watched over by gun-wielding guards.

The Adjustment Center is where Richard Allen Davis has lived since he was convicted for the kidnap and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas in Petaluma in 1993. Davis has been assaulted and spat upon by other inmates at least three times. Besides killing a child, many inmates blame Davis for the three strikes law.

"He's very well aware that any inmate, if they get a chance, will attempt to kill him," said Lt. Michael Barker, who is in charge of the unit.

Richard Ramirez, the satanic killer known as the "Night Stalker," is also in the Adjustment Center, where he has continued to receive fan mail from adoring women even while exposing himself to children in the prison's visiting area, according to Barker.

Details like that quickly spread among the inmates on Death Row, where there are few secrets. Prison officials marvel at the ability of inmates to pass on even the tiniest bits of overheard conversation from guards, prisoners and guests.

"The inmate network system is incredible," Barker said. "They are ingenious in the way they get information."

Despite the bleakness, humanity is still evident on Death Row. The inmates spend most of their time reading, playing chess or basketball, going to church or taking college courses.

"I have a lot of hope," said 39-year-old double murderer Richard Moon during a rare tour of Death Row last year. "They could abolish the death penalty."

Many condemned inmates actually have Web sites from which they solicit pen pals, including Moon, who claims on his Web site to have found God and been forgiven.

San Quentin was completed in 1854 as California's first penitentiary. It was built on land purchased for $10,000 just 30 years after a Licatuit Indian chief named Quentin was defeated there by Mexican soldiers.

The rudimentary prison, complete with a dungeon and whipping post, was soon overcrowded with 300 swindlers and cutthroats drawn to San Francisco by the Gold Rush.

In 1891, San Quentin and Folsom prisons were officially declared the state's designated execution sites.

The first hanging at San Quentin was in 1893. A total of 215 people were hanged there until 1937, when the Legislature approved lethal gas in place of the noose as the state's official method of execution. From then on, San Quentin was the only place in California where executions could occur.

During the next six decades, 196 prisoners were gassed. That unfortunate group includes one of the inmates who helped weld the gas chamber together when it arrived in pieces from the manufacturer 68 years ago.

The inmate, who welded the chamber's roof and side walls, was released and eventually got himself arrested for murder. In 1945, he was marched into the chamber he had helped build, his expert welds plainly visible as he took his final breath, Crittendon said.

It wasn't long after that execution that a double-jointed inmate wriggled free of his restraints inside the gas chamber. Crittendon said the warden, fearing what might happen next, ordered the execution to continue. As horrified witnesses watched, the man ran around frantically inside the chamber trying to escape the lethal fog before he finally collapsed and died, curled up in a corner, Crittendon said.

Nine people have been executed by lethal injection since 1995, when the gas chamber was ruled cruel and unusual punishment. But "the big jab," as the inmates call it, is still carried out inside the gas chamber, its infamous welds visible to this day.

Many of San Quentin's original buildings are still in use, including the old dungeon, where the torturous isolation cells are now used for storing evidence.

Corrections officials insist the prison is so dilapidated and overcrowded that a new Death Row must be built if California is going to continue holding condemned inmates at San Quentin.

As it is, the inmates are so dispersed around the prison that double or triple escorts are sometimes needed to move inmates from one place to another, often around blind corners and through less-secure areas, increasing the likelihood of trouble.

A few years ago, gang members were foiled in an elaborate plan to take over the Adjustment Center. One of the leaders, Paul "Roscoe" Tuilaepa, reportedly told prison officials after he was captured that the intent was never to escape. "We just wanted to kill every guard we could get our hands on," he said.

Safety measures have been taken since then, such as the implementation of an inmate classification system and a program that places prisoners in compatible groups during exercise.

Although the prison is safer than it was in the 1970s and 1980s, according to Crittendon, death is always lurking.

"Human life is very fragile," he said, defining the one overriding fact of life on Death Row.